The Serpent Pool (18 page)

‘Everyone is nowadays. Have you not seen the television schedules?’

‘No time for telly, but of course, you have a point. The time gap is a puzzle.’

‘There must be an explanation.’

‘The simplest being that the literature link is coincidental, and Bethany’s death has nothing to do with the other two.’

‘Is that what you think?’

He sounded like a crestfallen teenager. It took an effort of will not to squeeze his hand and reassure him that his theory was plausible. Even though she couldn’t see where it took the investigation.

‘To tell you God’s honest truth, Daniel, I’m not sure what to think.’

‘Doesn’t sound like you, ma’am.’

Out of nowhere, DS Greg Wharf had appeared at her elbow, twinkling like a genie unwilling to wait for a lamp to be rubbed. His breath smelt of beer and his expensive teeth formed a smile bright with lascivious triumph as his gaze flicked from Hannah to Daniel and back again. Anyone would think he’d caught them in
flagrante.

A tidal wave of embarrassment swept through her. For a moment, she thought she was going to throw up all over his nice new lambswool jersey.

She managed a curt nod, not trusting herself to speak.

‘This your local, ma’am? First time here for me. Cosy, innit?’ Greg squatted on his haunches, relishing her discomfiture. ‘The bloke next door found out I like a good quiz and asked me along. Our team lost, the other lot had a couple of ringers – one of them was last year’s Brain of Cumbria. No worries, it’s all a bit of fun.’

He beamed at Daniel and offered his hand. ‘Greg Wharf. I’m lucky enough to be a member of DCI Scarlett’s team. First week, and so far I’m loving every minute.’

Sarky bastard
. Hannah pictured him regaling the lads back at Divisional HQ with the story of how he’d chanced upon the DCI, playing away from home. He’d probably attribute it to good bobbying. Following his nose.

‘Daniel Kind.’

‘I recognised the face. Seen you on television, haven’t I?’ A wolfish grin. ‘You’re the son of the detective?’

‘You remember my father?’

‘We never met, but I’ve not been in this neck of the woods for long, and even I have heard about Ben Kind. You worked for him, didn’t you, ma’am?’

Hannah nodded, not wanting to guess what Greg had heard about her and Ben. She stole a glance at Daniel. His face gave nothing away.

‘You’ve heard about the lawyer who was found dead this afternoon, Sergeant?’

‘Stuart Wagg? It’s—’

‘My sister and I found his body,’ Daniel interrupted swiftly. ‘DCI Scarlett wanted to ask me a few questions, and naturally, I’m glad to help. She seems to believe there may be some tie-up with a cold case she’s investigating.’

Hannah found her voice. ‘We’re almost done, thanks, Greg; we have a joint briefing tomorrow with DCI Larter’s team. Nine o’clock.’

Wharf scrambled to his feet. She saw he was itching to ask why their inquiry was to be joined with Fern’s. But in front of Daniel, he could not talk shop.

‘Good to meet you, Mr Kind.’ His eyebrows lifted; he just couldn’t help himself, Hannah thought. ‘See you in the morning, ma’am.’

Turning on his heel, he blew a kiss towards a skinny girl
with a sunbed tan and a skirt slit to her thighs. Her name was Millie, and she was a clerk from Payroll at Divisional HQ. Say what you liked about bloody Greg Wharf, he was a fast worker.

Daniel leant back in his seat and expelled a breath.

‘Don’t worry about him.’

‘Who says I’m worried?’ she said tightly. ‘Greg’s a stirrer, but you handled him perfectly. All those hours in front of lecture audiences and television cameras were well spent. Of course, a decent DCI shouldn’t be fazed by a subordinate turning up out of the blue.’

‘You have nothing to be fazed about.’ Something made her say, ‘I’ll let you in on a secret.’

He leant towards her, his expression unreadable.

‘Go on, then.’

‘When I worked with your dad, there was a bit of banter about the pair of us.’

‘Banter?’

‘Young woman, older man, you can fill in the blanks. The canteen culture thrives on gossip, preferably salacious. Of course, it was all made up. There was never anything personal between Ben and me. No relationship, I mean.’

‘He rated you as a detective. And he liked you.’

‘The feeling was mutual. But he never laid a finger on me.’

He checked his watch. Reluctantly, she hoped. But the conversation was straying into dangerous territory.

‘Marc will wonder what is keeping you.’

‘He won’t wait up.’

‘No?’ He frowned, but if he meant to say
More
fool him,
he changed his mind. ‘I’d better let you go, all the same. Writing a book is a perfect excuse for not working
office hours, but I suppose you’ll be up at the crack of dawn. Let me see you to your car.’

Outside, flecks of snow had begun to stick on the ground. The roads would be icy in the morning. When they reached the cars, he stopped in his tracks. The bright light of a security lamp illuminated his face, but she couldn’t see what was in his mind. She murmured goodnight and grasped the door handle. For a moment, he was motionless. Then a strange look came into his eyes and, in a smooth, swift movement, he bent forward and kissed her hard, full on the lips.

‘Goodnight, Hannah.’

He strode away and was starting up his car before she’d drawn breath. She sat in the driver’s seat, not switching on the engine, watching his tail lights disappear down the lane.

It took her five minutes to move off. How to deal with Marc? By the time she was back at Undercrag, it would be past eleven o’clock. The best guess was that he’d be up in bed in the spare room, like a teenager in a strop, punishing her for having the temerity to challenge him. One of these days, maybe he’d grow up.

As for Daniel, she’d made her first resolution of the New Year. She was determined not to feel guilty about him. Nor about the look in his eyes, something so rare and unexpected that it had taken a moment to recognise it as the gaze of a man who yearned for her, body and soul.

No lights shone from Undercrag as she pulled up outside. A fox scurried away as she jumped out of the Lexus. An owl hooted as she heaved open the garage door.

Marc’s car was nowhere to be seen.

She walked a hundred yards up and down the lane, to
check that he had not, for some bizarre reason, parked outside the holiday cottages or under the trees. Of course, he hadn’t. The front door of the house was locked, a sure sign that he wasn’t inside. She checked the downstairs rooms to see if he’d left a message for her. He might have ventured out for a night drive, to clear his thoughts.

The house was as cold as a cemetery. Bare floorboards creaked, and the wind whistled through the windows yet to be replaced by double glazing. Only two of the bedrooms were habitable, and there wasn’t even a railing at the top of the stairs – the first floor was work in progress and the builders hadn’t started work again after their New Year break. Marc said there was an argument about an overdue payment. He said he didn’t owe a penny, and their accounts people had made a mistake.

Better check the first floor, just in case. But the instant she pressed the light switch by the staircase, the house plunged into darkness.

‘Shit, shit, shit!’

All of a sudden, this didn’t seem like home. Why had they come to Ambleside? Since moving in, they’d seen everything turn sour.

Picking her way down the steps to the cellar, she found the fuse box and the lights flicked back on. She ran back up and searched the bedrooms. Not a trace of him, but their best suitcase had vanished, along with some of his clothes. At least he’d left of his own accord, and wasn’t trussed up somewhere, the latest victim of whoever killed Stuart Wagg. But this wasn’t the comfort it should have been. She conducted a quick inventory and concluded that he’d taken enough to get by for several days. Maybe a week.

Bastard. He must be determined to make her sweat. They’d had rows before, plenty of them, but he’d never walked out on her. It was in his nature to fret about her friendships with other men – Ben Kind and Nick Lowther sprang to mind – but she hadn’t expected him to go overboard about Daniel. It wasn’t even as if anything had happened between them. Not counting the kiss.

Back in the kitchen, she filled a mug with coffee. Strong, black and scalding hot. Pinned up on the cork noticeboard by the filter machine was a photo of the two of them. He’d asked a fellow diner to snap them, in a restaurant outside Keswick where he’d taken her to celebrate her last birthday but one. They were laughing for the camera. His hand snaked around her waist. She had a bad habit of frowning when her picture was taken, but in this snap, neither of them looked as if they had a care in the world. She’d wondered if he kept it to remind himself that sometimes they could make believe they were a typical happy couple. Tonight they needed more than a photograph to bind them together.

Where could he be? Her best guess was that he’d run off to his mother’s in Grange-over-Sands. Mrs Amos would welcome him back with open arms. He was her pride and joy, and no woman was ever really good enough for him. The old lady had never been a member of Hannah’s fan club; as recently as their shopping expedition over Christmas, she’d mused aloud that there was something
unfeminine
about police work.

A phrase of Daniel’s sneaked back into her head. For once she shivered at the sound of his voice, as it echoed in her brain.

‘The man you’re looking for might be mad about books.’

Not Marc, surely.

It couldn’t be Marc.

Marc’s mother had suffered from insomnia ever since the day ten years ago when she woke up next to her husband to find that he’d died while she slept. She was up at five, and Marc lay in the room adjoining hers, listening as she shuffled about downstairs. All night, he’d tossed and turned, excited yet fearful that everything might go wrong.

Pale streaks of dawn crept through the curtains, furtive as trespassers. Birds chirruped on the branches outside. He levered himself from the warmth of the bed, shivering as he peered through the window. A haze hung over Morecambe Bay, but he saw none of the snow that had slanted down the previous evening as he drove from Ambleside to Grange. Perched on the slopes of the Cartmel Peninsula, the resort was sheltered by fells, and warmed by the Gulf Stream. It liked to think of itself as Cumbria’s Riviera. The climate was mild enough for a palm tree to have grown old in Mrs Amos’s small, steep front garden, although this morning, crystals of frost coated the leaves.

His mother had asked no questions when he phoned
and asked for a room for the night. Give her half an hour, she’d said, and a bed would be made up and ready in his old room. She didn’t approve of Hannah’s job, and therefore of Hannah herself. He knew that, secretly, she would never think any woman good enough for him, but she contented herself with just an occasional snipe from the sidelines.

They breakfasted together, but he resisted her conversational gambits and, in silent reproach, she switched on the radio. He lingered over a second cup of milky tea, anxious to catch up with the local headlines. Police had confirmed that the body found in the grounds of Stuart Wagg’s house belonged to the well-known solicitor. Fern Larter explained that a witness had seen a small purple hatchback parked on the verge next to the house on the day of Wagg’s death, and asked the owner, or anyone who had seen the vehicle, to contact the police.

Back to the breakfast show presenter. ‘And now,’ he said, ‘here’s an oldie but goodie from Rupert Holmes.’

Marc winced as he listened to the words. 

So what was Hannah going to do about Daniel Kind? He turned the radio off with such force that he almost snapped the knob.

His mother exclaimed with annoyance, ‘I was listening to that! So much nicer than the news. All these murders. I suppose Hannah is up to her neck in them?’

‘She investigates old, unsolved mysteries, remember? Cold cases.’

Mrs Amos sniffed to demonstrate what she thought of cold cases.

‘We’re not safe in our beds these days. They should build more prisons.’

An eerily cheerful weathergirl warned of dense fog blanketing northern and central parts of the county. The best advice was not to travel if your journey wasn’t really necessary. Mrs Amos clicked her tongue and said she blamed global warming.

Marc swallowed a last mouthful of tea and announced that he was setting off for a walk before he went into the bookshop.

‘Should you be driving at all if the fog—?’

‘Look outside, Mum,’ he said. ‘There’s even a glimmer of sun in the sky over the Bay.’

‘Well, I suppose you know best. But do wear something warm, dear.’

Once a mother, always a mother.

He kissed her leathery cheek and set off for the old promenade. Threads of mist gathered around the fells above the town, and he supposed that Undercrag would be wrapped in a cold grey shroud. Hannah’s problem, not his. She should never have set up secret meetings with Daniel Kind.

He passed the causeway leading to Holme Island, nowadays separated from the mainland by yellow-brown spartina grass so rampant and powerful that some people said it was all that saved the promenade from destruction by the waves. Sheep grazed where once children built sandcastles. Eventually, they’d have to rename the town Grange-over-Grass. Even the metal posts from a long-gone pier had been engulfed by the salt flats.

He leant on the railings at the spot which marked the end of an invisible route across the Bay. A month after his first date with Hannah, he’d taken her on the eight-mile walk from Arnside to Grange, led by a guide who knew the shifting sands like the back of his hand. At times, the water reached up to their thighs. One false move, and you were sunk. That summer Sunday afternoon, the hint of danger added a frisson as he squeezed her hand and whispered what they’d do when he got her back home.

Along the way, they’d watched oystercatchers probing for shellfish, and ducks whirring overhead, while she’d listened to his stories about books with the intense concentration of a woman newly in love. He told her about chancing upon the handwritten manuscript of a famous mystery novel in a Lunedale junk shop and selling it to a Japanese collector for a small fortune. The murderer in the story constructed an ingenious alibi. It was only broken when the detective realised the suspect could have reached the victim in time if he travelled, not around the long and winding coast roads, but diagonally across the still waters of the Bay.

Murder, murder, everywhere.

Times changed, familiarity bred boredom. Hannah was weary of books, and his business. Weary of him, too; he
was afraid he didn’t turn her on the way he once had. Cassie was different. She was younger, not obsessed with her own career, but the clues suggested she fell for men who adored her, yet let her down in the end. She was ready for kindness. Last night, he’d sent her a text the moment Hannah slammed the door behind her on her way for a tryst with Daniel Kind.

What r u doing 2mrw?

Cassie wasn’t down to work a shift at the shop; and he didn’t need her to provide cover. In addition to Zoe, Judith, a long-serving part-timer, was due in today. He craved Cassie’s company, the ache of emptiness like a physical hunger, chewing at his guts.

Within thirty seconds, she texted back:

Nada.

Straight away, he asked if she fancied a drink, but she’d replied
Sorry, no can do.

Shit; was the boyfriend back on the scene? Feeling sick in the pit of his stomach, he punched out another message, wanting to know if they could meet in the morning.

Another instant reply.

Love to.

She even added a couple of kisses.

On a clear day, you could see Blackpool Tower from the crumbling promenade, but this morning he could barely make out the water stretching beyond Holme. The sun had fled, leaving the sky as grey and cloudy as a fortune-teller’s ball. But who cared? His spine tingled.

Go for it.

He fished his mobile out of his pocket.

‘Daniel.’ Hannah’s voice was soft in his ear. ‘Sorry to disturb you.’

He rubbed his eyes. Seven-thirty, and the phone’s relentless wail had dragged him from under the duvet. Thank God he’d resisted the temptation to let it ring. He’d not climbed into bed until three that morning. Too tense to sleep, he’d switched on his laptop, determined to chisel the final paragraphs of his talk for Arlo Denstone’s Festival. He hated missing deadlines, often labouring long and late into the night to meet an editor’s timescale, and he’d crafted a dozen fresh sentences to sum up Thomas De Quincey and the fine art of murder.

But his heart was no longer in his subject. It was one thing to play witty and imaginative games with the notion of murder for pleasure, quite another to stumble across its cold reality. There was nothing exhilarating about murder in the flesh. For all its brilliance, De Quincey’s gleeful prose was streaked with cruelty, and Daniel saw something repellent in his morbid fantasies of vengeance. De Quincey was a voyeur, ogling murderers from a safe distance. His addiction to violent death might have been cured if he’d ever looked down into a disused well, and seen and smelt a rotting corpse.

‘Hello, Hannah.’

He squeezed the phone so tight it hurt. To prove he wasn’t dreaming? His brain was sluggish, he needed a cold shower and a hot coffee. But she wouldn’t call at this hour unless it was urgent.

‘You said something about Stuart Wagg last night. I was knackered, otherwise I’d have picked up on it at the time.’

‘Sorry, I don’t—’

‘It hit me at half four this morning. Woke me up.’

He blinked hard. ‘What’s bugging you, Hannah?’

‘You mentioned he suffered from claustrophobia.’

‘Louise told me. It was no secret. Apparently, he never even used the lift at the office, he always took the stairs up to his room on the top floor.’

‘So, that’s why his architect designed Crag Gill with such vast rooms, and archways instead of doors?’

‘Yes, even though he made a joke of it, the fear was real. Louise said that when he was at school, another kid locked him in a cupboard as a prank, and Stuart was scared witless. He never quite got over the trauma. Hard to imagine a more agonising death for him. To be trapped underground, with no hope of escape.’

While Hannah absorbed this in silence, he moved to the window and nudged the curtains apart. Fog shrouded the cipher garden. Trees and bushes were dark, shapeless forms. The tarn was invisible. He might have been anywhere.

‘Perfect,’ she said at last. ‘Thanks for your help.’

‘What is this about?’

‘The link between Stuart’s murder and the other two deaths.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘Me neither. But believe me, I will.’

Her voice hardened. Raw anger, he thought, on the behalf of the victims. He’d heard the same edge of furious determination before, in the days when his father lived at home.

‘What do you think it means?’ When she hesitated, he said. ‘Sorry, I shouldn’t ask.’

‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘If you really want to know.’

A moment of intimacy, like the night before. He had to give her the chance to change her mind, and back away.

‘I don’t want you to breach confidentiality.’

‘It’s not against the rules to think aloud,’ she said. ‘OK, here goes. Bethany Friend was afraid of water, George Saffell was terrified of pain and dreaded losing his book collection, and Stuart Wagg was claustrophobic. Their lives all ended in circumstances that they would have found truly appalling.’

Hannah’s heart beat faster as she dropped the phone into its cradle. Mustn’t let thoughts of Daniel distract her; she had enough on her plate. It had seemed strange, to wake up alone, even though Marc often stayed away from home, when exhibiting at book fairs, or visiting collectors with books to sell. But this morning was different. The draughty, echoing house felt too big for her. She didn’t know when he’d be back. Or if.

She checked her mobile to see if he’d sent a text. Nothing. The mean sod. If he was staying with his mother, he’d soon tire of the tug of her apron strings. OK, let him sweat. No way was she going to make the first move. Not today, at any rate.

Number one priority was to report that Bethany Friend had worked for Amos Books before moving to the university. Whatever she said to Daniel in rare moments of bravado, if she screwed this case up, her career would be flushed down the pan. Lauren would have to be told that Marc knew Bethany, but first she wanted to break the news to Fern Larter. She texted Fern, asking to see her before the joint team briefing. The reply was instant. Fern was in a buoyant
mood, pleased with her crack-of-dawn radio interview and that the investigation into George Saffell’s death, stalled for so long, was at last on the move.

The grass outside Undercrag did not look frozen, but when she stood on it to de-ice the windscreen of the Lexus, it felt as hard and crunchy as icing on a cake. The frost had preserved countless deer slots and Hannah wondered if, while she slept, a large number of the animals had roamed outside her home in the moonlight. Or maybe a handful of them had danced round and round in ever-decreasing circles. She knew exactly what that felt like.

The fog clutched at her throat as she locked the front door, and turned the journey to Kendal into a nerve-wracking crawl. Hannah hated fog, and the way it stagnated in the valleys, transforming the Lakes into a cold and alien land. And she hated driving through it even more. You could never tell what lay round the next bend. A car without lights, a multi-vehicle pile-up.

The twists of the road demanded all her concentration. But she couldn’t rid her mind of a single image: the rictus of anger on Wanda Saffell’s face, on New Year’s Eve, as she threw red wine over Arlo Denstone’s white jacket. Wanda was drunk that night, and a woman scorned. But did the incident reveal a dangerous lack of restraint? Was she capable of much worse than making a scene at a party? Or was Hannah simply hoping so because she’d hinted that Marc had slept with Bethany?

She made straight for Fern’s office. Fern organised a coffee for each of them and spent five minutes putting things into perspective. Marc needed to be interviewed, for the record. If he could contribute anything more to the inquiry, fine.
But Bethany had finished at the bookshop months before her death. She’d had countless previous jobs if you included all her part-time stints behind bars or waiting on table. It was no big deal.

‘Marc has moved out,’ Hannah said.

Fern swallowed a mouthful of coffee. The slogan on her coaster read
Well-behaved women seldom make history
.

‘After you read him the riot act?’

‘He ought to have been upfront, and admitted that he knew her. Not leave me to find out from Wanda Saffell.’

As she spoke, she realised she sounded flinty and uncompromising. Mulish was how Marc described her in this kind of mood.

‘Yeah, but we don’t always do the right thing, do we? He must have worried that you’d react badly.’

‘He was right to worry.’

Fern put her head on one side, as if this might help her read Hannah’s mind. ‘You’re not seriously thinking that he might have anything to do with Bethany’s death?’